Chapter Two

It was strange how well Ryan
remembered that first meeting.The next
few weeks of their friendship were hazy in comparison.They had become best friends at some point,
but he had no idea how it had developed when he thought back to it.Ryan’s awe had calmed down as he found his
feet in the friendship, and they were equals by Christmas.Pretty much.

“Evening
News, mate,” a man in a yellow jacket tried to thrust a free newspaper in his
face.Ryan walked past him and paid him
no further heed.He was in a bad mood.That particular newspaper distributor had
become a litmus test for Ryan to assess how he felt on any given day.If he were in a good mood, he would accept a
paper and thank the man.If he was just
muddling along, he would politely decline the offer and carry on.And then on the days when his mood was black,
Ryan would take it out on this man by tritely ignoring him.When he was in a foul mood he would snap at
the man.A sharply spoken ‘no,’ and a
glare would make him feel like he had displaced some tension, although it never
made him feel any better.

Ryan
strode along and found himself at the bus-stop in no time, fully focussed on
just getting home.This was a part of
the day that he usually relished.Many
people who drove looked down on Ryan’s mode of transport.To travel on the peasant wagon was beneath
them, but there was something that Ryan secretly enjoyed about the ninety
minutes he got to himself each day to read and listen to music.In the morning it represented the time he
spent not in work.By reading as much as
he could in the morning, he felt that he kept his mind active and that his day
wasn’t geared solely towards his mind-numbing work.In the evening, the journey home epitomised
the demi-freedom of leaving the office and he always enjoyed having a bit of
time to himself.The outside world made
no demands of him, and he was able to switch off, once again with music and
reading; two things that he considered to be very important to his
existance.He failed to get irked by the
things that other passengers seemed to.He didn’t mind if people sat next to him, and he ignored the tinny
rackets emanating from mobile phones by plugging in his headphones and drowning
it out.He saw others silently seething
and wondered why they didn’t try and make the most of the bus journey.His way was certainly better than sitting in
traffic, unable to unwind and just getting more and more frustrated.Ryan felt that he was lucky to have
discovered the secret.

There
were downsides, of course.Surly bus
drivers were a hazard, especially if you had the audacity to try and pay with a
twenty pound note.A screaming child
could reach decibels higher than a MP3 player could counter and prove to be an
irritant.Sometimes schoolchildren would
crawl over Ryan in order to assault one of their friends.People smoking on buses annoyed him as
well.Ryan had no issue with smokers,
but smoking on a short bus ride seemed like such a needless act.It seemed to smell worse on buses than
anywhere else.

Living
in Manchester,
a long wait for a bus was never an option, and sure enough Ryan was taking his
seat on the top deck within minutes of arriving at the stop.Ryan always commuted on the top deck because
he believed that he was too young to sit downstairs.Downstairs was for people who feared
disruption and the potential threats of sitting upstairs; the smoking, the
shouting, the music on mobile phones, alongside unruliness and anarchy away
from the watchful eye of the bus driver.Later in the evenings, Ryan would sit downstairs, but that was just
common sense in this day and age.

He pulled a book
out of his bag and tried to pick up the story from where he had left off that
morning.His concentration span didn’t
seem to have improved over the course of the day; he struggled to follow the
sentences and often had to re-read passages in order to work out what the hell
was going on.This was one of the less
pleasant journeys for Ryan, where he struggled to focus on what he was doing
and started to look at his fellow passengers, ensuring at all times that he
didn’t make any sort of eye contact.This was important as people were fairly intolerant of eye contact in
the cities.It was deemed threatening,
intrusive or weird.It was certainly not
encouraged.This meant briefly glancing
at people, then gazing out of the window and then trying to attend to the book
again.It was only on these distracted
commutes that Ryan realised how many people did nothing whatsoever to fill up
their time.No music, no reading, not
even sending text messages.They just
sat there and allowed themselves to be transported.

This apathy was
not limited to the older passengers.Ryan noticed a girl who was around his age, dressed to impress in a
powerful suit, but lacking anything Ryan could detect as passion.There was no desire in that woman.She was just another bored time-waster with
nothing about her.So young and already
so far gone.By reading a book, Ryan
knew that he was hardly any better than them, and that was why he needed to
sort his life out.He was making no impact
at the moment and he didn’t want to become bland.He’d sort it out when he was prepared to take
on the world again.An early night would
do the trick.There was no shame in an
early night; it had been a heavy weekend.

“Guess who’s off this weekend?”
Shaun cried out down the phone.“Over-staffed this weekend it would seem!”

“Which
means…”

“Which
means we get to get fucked up!Hoorah!”
he called out and hung up.Ryan cast
glances around the office to make sure no-one had heard that part of the phone
call.It was a phone call that Ryan had
frequently received and it always had a positive impact on his mood.When Shaun had the weekend off, it was
inspiration enough to party as hard as possible, and it felt a bit like the old
days.

Arrangements
were hastily made.On Friday night Barry
and Ripley joined them for a gig, which was a tradition the four of them had
clung onto since they left uni.It had
been one of their favourite communal past-times and they always made sure they
had gigs lined up.To have no gigs might
imply that they were losing touch somehow.Shaun had spied a band that they all wanted to see and set about
arranging some narcotics for the occasion.He didn’t need to ask; he knew they’d all be up for it.They each dropped a pill during the support
act and came up during the headliners, ensuring an enthusiastic response to a
band they all wanted to see.They loved
their music as it was, but stimulants just made the whole experience much better.Pints were replaced with bottles of water,
and they danced manically to beats that might have otherwise eluded them,
occasionally grinning at each other, more often lost in their own private
moments, exultant in the haze of strobe lighting.

For
Ryan to be taking pills at gigs showed how much he had changed over time.Throughout his teens, he had expressed an
interest in cannabis; something that became a lifestyle choice when he went to
University.But he always maintained
that he would go no further than weed.It was only from listening to the way that Ripley and Shaun spoke of
pills that Ryan felt a shift in his values.Where were the heart attacks and dehydration in these tales of their
best nights ever?They exchanged
experiences with an understanding that elicited great enthusiasm in them.Barry and Lucinda had both dabbled and also
reported great times, laughing and joking about things that they had said and
done.Even the come down sounded like an
interesting experience; a chemically induced mood collapse that would serve to
make you act irrationally.Ryan believed
that he was all about experiences and living life to the full, and it was at Glastonbury at the end of
his first year that he had taken the plunge.Three times.

From
then on, Ryan had been willing to experiment, so to be taking pills that Friday
didn’t seem unusual any more.These
adventures occurred only infrequently in order to make them more enjoyable when
they did happen.That was the rule.After the gig, they dropped again and moved
to a club for a few more hours of dancing and rushing.They spent the remainder of the night, until
the hours well after dawn, smoking and occasionally speaking in Ripley’s
flat.Conversation ranged from the
seemingly meaningful, to the outright nonsensical.It was all part of the fun.As it was a big weekend, that meant that they
all had to get themselves in shape for a heavy night out on Saturday.One by one, the four of them dropped off to
sleep on Ripley’s couches and awoke in the mid afternoon, totally unprepared
for another night of indulgence.Everyone was out that night, so Barry suggested they take another pill
each and get themselves back on form.

It
did the trick and soon they were back out on the town, trawling a few bars and
drinking themselves into a club. They
had past form to live up to, so they were pretty much obliged to get hammered,
again holding on to the spirit that had made their University years so
pleasurable.The evening passed in a
haze, with little memorable moments, but an evening that would remembered as a
good time.They all crashed out at
Barry’s place.Before dawn this
time.Then it was Sunday lunchtime and
Ryan headed home for the first time that weekend.He spent the afternoon in his room, aching
from over-indulgence and wishing that time would go more slowly for once.He finally emerged in the evening to meet
Barry for a couple of pints to ease the pain.He had four and it sent him straight to sleep that night.Shaun had joined them at last orders, having
been drinking on duty during the night.He too looked like crap, and Ryan appreciated him for that very
reason.It was nice to have someone to
share your suffering with.